How Thanksgiving took the place of an awesome military celebration

Print showing a man on a
flagpole replacing the British flag with an American flag as the
British fleet departs New York Harbor.Library of Congress

If you asked a New Yorker, or anyone from the Northeastern
Seaboard for that matter, 150 years ago if they were excited for
Thanksgiving you would have received a blank stare.

Instead, that individual would likely be quickly preparing for
the major late-November holiday of the time: Evacuation
Day.

Prior to President Lincoln's establishment
of Thanksgiving as an annual national holiday — a decision that
followed the Union victory at Gettysburg in an attempt to foster
national unity — Thanksgiving simply did not exist as a standard
celebration.

States and communities within the Northeast celebrated the idea
of giving thanks, but it was never a widespread national event
linked to a certain day, as it is now.

Instead, November 25th was a day for national celebration for a
vastly different reason.

On November 25, 1783 the last British troops withdrew from
Manhattan, signaling the end of the Revolutionary War.

Washington's triumphal entry into [Manhattan] was delayed as the
last Union flags that still flew were torn down. British soldiers
went to the pains of flying a Union flag in Battery Park and
greasing the flagpole. (The spiteful lubrication was intended to
make removing the flag exceptionally difficult and all but
ensured that it would still be in view as their ships departed.)

But as soon as British vessels raised sail, patriots did their
all to remove it and replace it with the Stars and Stripes.
Wooden cleats were quickly cut and nailed into the pole.

Despite the grease, Continental Army veteran John Van Arsdale
managed to clamber up the pole and rip down the flag while the
British were still in view of the harbor.

In retaliation, the British fired a single cannon towards crowds
lining Staten Island, but the shot fell short.

The celebration of Evacuation Day continued until the lead-up to
World War I, as a secular feast featuring plentiful amounts of
food and liquor. The completion of the holiday was a competitive
reenactment of clambering up an oiled pole to rip down a British
flag.

The Prison Ship Martyrs
Monument in Fort Greene park, Brooklyn carries the remains of
those who died about the British prison ships.Adolph Alexander
Weinman

As relations with Britain warmed — and perhaps because the US and
Britain were such close allies in World War I — interest in
Evacuation Day was quickly subsumed by Thanksgiving.

But Evacuation Day should at least be brought back into the
public conscience. Not because of any lingering ill will towards
the British, of course. But rather because it's aa celebration,
in properly unique fashion, of a newly established United States.

Along with the celebration of kicking out the British, Evacuation
Day also serves as a poignant reminder that Americans died trying
to free Manhattan from British rule — a place that's now the site
of the US's greatest and most iconic city.

Over 10,000 Revolutionary soldiers and sailors perished
aboard British prison ships in Brooklyn's Wallabout Bay (near the
present-day Brooklyn Navy Yard) during the seven year British
occupation of the city — a total that exceeds the number of
soldiers killed in battles throughout the war.

By celebrating Evacuation Day, the US can help remember these
thousands of early American patriots, and commemorate the end of
America's founding conflict.